The Case Against Glafira Rosales

The latest turn in the Glafira Rosales case is her arrest today on tax evasion charges. The surprises are manifold, including the question why Rosales remained in the US when she has bank accounts abroad; but the one getting the most attention is the government’s decision to pursue tax charges instead of crimes related to selling fakes:

Federal authorities declined to comment on the decision not to charge Ms. Rosales with anything related to the sale of counterfeits. But the complaint they filed discussed in some detail their reasons for believing them to be fake and focused on holes in her accounts of how she had obtained them from two collectors. The first collector did not exist, investigators said, and the second denied ever owning the paintings in an interview with the F.B.I. In addition, authorities said that much of the money Ms. Rosales received as the broker in the sale should have been turned over to a collector, if one existed, but instead was largely kept by her.

In presenting their charges on Tuesday, the authorities outlined the details of an international scheme they said clearly showed Ms. Rosales’s efforts to profit from counterfeiting.

In all, they say, she sold about 63 works to two prominent art dealers in New York between 1994 and 2008. But the case focused on 2006 to 2008 when investigators found irregularities in her tax filings, and 2007 to 2011, when they say she kept undisclosed foreign bank accounts.